Snow on the pickup.

is something I remove to a good degree.

I make my vehicle safe so that someone behind me doesn't get hit with a foot thick four by six chunk of snow that was left on the roof othe capper.

I was in Massachusetts years ago and we got hit with about a foot and a half of it one night. I was out cleaning the rig off and heating it up a bit. I hadn't gotten the roof of the capper and had cold hands.

I got into the cab and put my hands over the heater and a cop pulled up and asked me if I was going to clean the snow off of my capper.

"Nope! Takin' it to Miami with me. Them folks down there pay 8 bucks a pound for it," I replied. He gave me a dirty look and drove off.

I admit that once in a while if I get a blanket of loose, fluffy snow on the rig I'll clean off the windshield and drive slowly through the plans and enjoy seeing it fly off if it's the time when things are not busy. It's fun watching it. However, by the time I get to any kind of a highway I make damned good and sure the rig is clean.

Much to my relief the local police department enforces this law with common sense. I think the law was written that ALL snow has to be removed. The local Gendarmes are reasonable. All they are interested in is safety so I don't have to go and peel things down to bare metal or anything too radical.

The local cops just make sure you're safe which is fair and reasonable. 

I suppose Karen thinks the law is there to keep her daintly little eyes from being offended by snow on other people's cars.

Then again, Karen and Ken are not the sharpest tools in the shed. Kinda like a broken light bulb, not too bright.

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About a week ago we got a pretty good powdery dusting. I swept the windows and drove through the plan and enjoyed watching it all blow off inside a half mile. No animals were harmed.

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One of the things that makes me laugh is that people think mariners are stupid

All they know is beer, backsplices and boobs, right?

They seem to forget one thing.  

There are no electricians, plumbers, carpenters or other tradesmen at sea. We have to basically do it all.

==============================

A while ago I canned a general contractor for being sending me incompetent subcontractors and unless I am wrong when I mentioned I was a mariner I think he jumped to that conclusion and figured I was incompetent and would accept poor work.

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Contractors

One other thing in dealing with contractors. If you specify something (like in my case Zinsser BIN for remediation paint, a white pigmented shellac) and the contractor shows up with anything else then send him packing. It's YOUR job to make good and sure he know this in advance. Get it in writing if necessary and let him know you won't accept anything else.

This is a somewhat common practice with sketchy contractors. They agree to use top notch materials and show up with something less expensive with a song and dance about how it's the same thing. It may very well be but it wasn't the deal.

Back in the day when I contracted various jobs for a living if something came up I actually called the client and asked them if they would accept substitutions and gave them the reason. Most of them ran with it. Some didn't.

When I remediated the basement I picked a certain product and much to the credit of the person who bid and got the job we agreed would supply the product and he was labor only. It worked.

The little bastard took me to the cleaners, made about $100/hour and truth is I respected him for it. I want him to do some more work for me but I'm going to sharpen my pencil the next time.

 

On the other hand had I not gone this route I probably would have had to throw a couple more contractors out.

I am NOT a prick. I am a somewhat informed Old School consumer and 

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Then I had her bent over with her head stuck in a gas stove...

I don't remember anything else from the story but I do remember the person I told it to and the place. Thirty some odd years ago I pulled the tale out of a bag of the Piccolo bag of bull$hit and a conversation with an old shipmate it got brought up.

Anyway it was long ago and far away and some wetnose kid was bragging about some sexual exploit. I didn't find it interesting, sexy or anything. It was just plain juvenile to tell everyone about it and I instantly chalked it off as a dopey kid wanting acceptence which I was NOT going to give him because he had not earned it.

So of course I countered his tale with whatever and a part of it that stuck in my shipmates mind was the line "Then I had her bent over with her head stuck in a gas stove oven and turned the gas on and..."

There were four of us in the galley and the other two besides me and the kid shuffled off because they didn't want to crack up and get me busted.

Still, I wish I could remember the whole speil but maybe that's a good thing because I likely wouldn't post it here. It was some pretty twisted $hit. 

Was it true? HAH! Why let the facts ruin a perfectly good story but it served its purpose because I told he kid "You get more if you keep your mouth shut!"

Anyway it musta been pretty good if it was remembered 35 years later.

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Yes I am!! I'm RICH! I can AFFORD to waste all of our natural resources!

is what I told a dog walker this morning.

I had started my pickup and realized I had forgotten my phone and got out to walk back in to get it and some nosy dog walker asked me if I was going to let it idle until it got warm.

For God's sake I was just running in to grab something! It's not like I was leaving it running for the whole morning! But decided that nosy gets what nosy wants.

Then once inside I thought that it would be nice to get into a warm vehicle so I puttered around inside for a while.

It was nice getting into a warm vehicle and I do believe I am going to put a space heater in the front seat so I can turn it on before I go out into the cold.

As I age the cold bothers me more and more.

******************************

In other news one of the guys working in the basement asked me if I'd pick him up a pack of smokes while I was out grocery shopping. I agreed.

In the register line the woman in front of me started in with a health lecture and I replied rather convincingly that I quit 30 years ago and was picking them up for my grandson.

You wanted to be outraged? I gave you something to be outraged about.

Besides, what's the problem? He only smokes when we drink beer together. He's 12 now and old enough to be making his own decisions wich reminds me, he's coming by to visit and I'm out of beer. I guesss I should pick up a case. He's coming over this afternoon.

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Dear politician.

The services, mainly the Army and Marines take 22 year old youngsters fresh out of school and put them in charge of ARMED men. These youngsters, fresh out of their teen are called called Platoon Leaders.

The men they lead are armed to the teeth. They carry an number of weapons, most of which are not readily available to the civilian.

They are for the overwhelming part successful as leaders. These young lieutenants get the job done, lead their people and eventually return to civilian life either by finishing their obligations or retirement after a minimum of 20 years service.

That being said, I wonder why elected officials have such a hard time leading an armed civilian populace. I would like to know why some elected officials want to disarm the populace.

I'll be blunt here.

If you are incapable of leading an armed people then you must be doing something wrong and have no business calling yourself a leader because it sounds like you are incapable of even leading a platoon much less a populace.

You could easily be replaced by a 22 year old yooungster that's fresh out of a Platoon Leader's course...AND he'd likely do a better job!

555555555555555555555555555

Of course I am my own leader. You are merely my representaive. You work for me.

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Ah, yes. Scotch.

I have not had a drink of basic Scotch whisky in a while so last night I picked up a half pint.

It is a far more polished drink than the bottom shelf bourbon I have learned to prefer. Dewar's. It does not have the authority that low end bourbon has, either.

Of course I love smoky Scotch whiskies but Dewars isn't that.

I have been away from the Jamesons for a while because it is too smooth and has turned into a sneaky drink for me. It sneaks up on me.

It is what it is.

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Someone asked me about why I dated older woman.

Because after my divorce I did not want to enter the dating world as it was at the time on the rebound and make the same mistake twice.

Early on I ran into a divorced 40 something that was(looking back on it) on the prowl. We were together for a while and it made me rethink things and for years afterwards I very seldom went out with a woman my own age.

It was actually a pretty good deal because I didn't have to deal with the girly crap about wanting to go to the club with the cool kids and all of the crap associated with it like the 'biological clock' that turns many single women in their 30s into a real mess.

The 'biological clock' watchers were to be avoided like leprosy. Not only were they a pain in the ass and desperate to marry but some of them were downright dishonest and were simply looking for a sperm doner.

I've met more than one guy that's either gotten themselves into a bad marriage or become an unmarried father (and was stuck with paying child support) by designing woman biological clock watchers that thought they were running out of time.

Still, after dealing with one 40 something early on I figured things out and set some parameters.

First, no never been marrieds or widows. Divorcees only. If she hadn't been married by 40 odds were there was probably something wrong with her. Widows were to be avoided, too. Divorcees went to the head of the line because it's a lot easier to compete against a rat ex husband than it is to compete against a sainted ghost.

Another thing about the older set is you didn't have to do much to impress them. "Hey, let's catch a movie at the Opium (Orpheum) theater." was met with a cheerful acceptence. 

On the other hand, an invite to an upscale place was likely to be met with "Why bother getting dressed up? Let's just grab a burger or something."

A number of times when I was passing through a place (read: short money in my pocket) they would recognize it and invite me in for supper or something along those lines. 

Wow! As I write I remember this damned close to 60 year old woman that LOVED to sail. Seeing how I was living on a sailboat she was a semi regular visitor and she never failed to bring along lots of food and drink. Once in a while whan I didn't have anything to do I'd run up to the head of the dock and jump into the corner of Telephone and Telephone and invest a quarter and she'd usually come running.

She was a wonderful woman, hilarious and excellent company any way you sliced it. A couple of times the proverbal three hour tour tuned into three days of gunkholing around Kodiak Island together.

At the time I was simply dating for fun and had no immediate plans of remarriage or having a family so 40 somethings generally fit the bill.

This didn't mean I dated older women exclusively. I didn't but over the fifteen years I spent single after my divorce I did date quite a number of them and enjoyed some damned good company and had a lot of fun.

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Back in the day, a sea story.

At sea a man's religion is his own business and in return they are expected to keep it to themselves. 

Once a religious zealot came aboard and almost instantly started carrying on. I stood up to the plate to deal with this guy.

Listen, we do not need any sky pilots and Bible punchers here. Your religion is your business and you had best keep it to yourself if you want to get along here. Nobody care what religion you are.

Presumably you are a fundementalist Christian of some sort which is fine. If you say grace before meals, fine. Most of us will probably stop for a second and nod while you pray a bit before eating out of respect for a fellow crewman's religion.

You were not hired for your religious affiliation. You were hired to do a job and that's it. Truthfully, most of us would rather have an athiest or an Estemenian that was a good deckhand instead of a good Christian. It's about doing a job to feed your family.

We don't care if you're Jewish or Mormon and don't drink coffee or eat pork. Don't eat it or drink it however you are still going to have to make coffee and cook bacon and pork chops so get used to it. It's aprt of the job.

If you start annoying everyone you'll most likely be run off. HR generally let's us settle things for the most part unless it's blatent predjudice and they're not stupid.

Now put your religion in your soul, grab a mop and get the galley squared away.

He turned out OK.

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The Old Broad's Club.

The other day I heard a woman say something that made me laugh.

"I'll bet you are a card carrying member of The Old Broad's Club because it is very obvious you are not running around with a stick up your ass," I said to her. 

The woman next to her looked upset.

The Old Broad looked at me and laughed and said, "I guess I am!"

The other woman looked confused.

"The Old Broad's Club is open to women about sixty and over that don't have a stick up their ass and still have a good sense of life because they refused to turn into scared little old ladies," I said the the woman that looked like she was going to stuck her nose where it wasn't wanted.

I turned to the Old Broad and said, "You look like they let you sneak in about fifteen years too early. You don't look a minute over forty-five. I dated someone a lot like you when I was thirty." I knew I had made her day with the way her faced lit up.

I like Old Broads. They can never be mistaken for Karens who are a royal pain in the ass.

I went out with a few back during my dating years and they were a lot of fun. That was when I'd date for fun and not looking for a mate.

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I just checked in on the YLs by someone in Maine

Instead of QSO I said, 'Finest kind' which kinda threw him a bit seeing I am in PA.

'Finest kind' is a charming expression that is very regional and is seldom heard outside of the fishing communities of Maine.

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Busted for smuggling eggs into the country.

In Mexico now eggs are $3.40 US for a 30 pack..

the news says that egg smuggling into the States from Mexico has gone up 108%. That's their figures. My guess is that's awfully low.

When it comes to eggs being smuggled in it's a pretty good bet that someone that just paid $7  for a dozen is sure willing to overlook smuggling if they can be paying ten bucks for a 30 pack.

This entire country was started by smugglers.

888888888888888888888888

I always wonder what it would be like being tossed into the federal holding pen with various hardened criminal types.

"What'dja do, Kid?"

"I got popped for smuggling eggs... AND creating a disturbance."

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But it's FREE!

Yeah. It's free. But what in tarnation are you going to DO with it?

Someone offered me the top 100 feet of a 300 foot radio tower he got somewhere and of course I refused. 

When I refused he said, "But it's FREE!"

Yeah, OK. It's free but I still don't want the damned thing. 

In order to stand the damned thing I would have to pour about a 25x25 by 8 foot deep concrete pad and three or four 6x6x6 foot cubes to hold the guy wire ends.

On top of that the neighbors, who have been very, very good to me over the years would probably  pay me a visit with torches and pitchforks if I deciced to erect such an eyesore in my neighborhood.

Yeah, I have a right to do this on my own property and I have no intention of giving up that right but out of basice civility and consideration for others I can't see doing such a thing.

That also doesn't include the 265 cubic yard concrete pour (around $45,000 after all is said and done) and all the 1.5 inch galvanized cable required to erect the damned thing.

But by gum and by gravy it's FREE!

I don't think so.

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I have gotten downright mean.

My attitude USED to be 'send bachelors'.

Now it's send married men that love their wives and have lots of children because if push comes to shove I want the people that come for me to have the possibility of leaving widows and orphans so they can have something to think about.

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Ham radio for a certain group.

In a couple of weeks I am likely going to drag the PRC 320 to a shooting match of sorts for the hell of it.

Ham radio as such is a VERY broad hobby. It's generally associated with nerdy looking guys talking to people overseas and across the country. That's just a part of it.

It's actually the part that I enjoy the most. I do like to DX (DX=Distant Exchange, an old telegrapher term for communication with people over long distances)

A while ago a bunch of inexpensive Chinese 2 meter handy-talkies went on sale for peanuts and many people took one look at them and say "Ham radio! I can talk all over the workd for $20!" only to be disappointed when they discovered that the 2 meter band is basically line of sight. 

There are still a lot of these floating around and every once in a while someone asks me to program one for them and they are disappointed because I can't. I have to read the directions, same as everybody else.

Along the same lines when I was shooting service rifle all the time people would ask me questions about obscure calibers and occasionally about rifles I had never seen before and seemed surprised when I knew little or nothing about them.

While I can pick up most rifles with no instruction and virtually all rifles with minimal instruction and use them, I am by no means an expert although I am far more knowledgable than most. Still, there's a lot I don't know about uncommon calibers and firearms. It's the same with ham radio.

My plan at the shooting match is to get a few of the people I know to try and check in with me and give me their home states.

A lot of preppers started getting into ham radio a while back. I presume they thought that if the TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as we Know it) occurs that they could call up someone to help them hold off the Great Zombie Apocalypse. Some of them got into the hobby after they found out the truth that ham radio does NOT mean you have 24/7 communications with the world.

Actually from a practical standpoint if the entire infrastructure broke down one good use I cauld have for basic HF communications is that I can almost always raise someone in OH, IL, or IIN and get a local weather report. The weather where I live comes from the west and it would give me an idea of what was headed this way.

I actually did get WX reports from these places and while they were not dead on accurate, they gave me a pretty good idea of what was headed this way. For example when someone in IN reported 6 inches of snow, I almost always got snow. It might have been a dusting or it might have been 3 feet but I almost ALWAYS wound up getting snow inside a couple of days.

Of course the people that demand pinpoint accuracy will be disappointed, it's a damned good ball park figure of what's headed this way.

Ham radio IS good for spreading infomation (also disinformation like all double edged swords). A ham net can spread information far and wide and FAST as a group of us proved a while back. We had an operator in NH standing by that was supposed to get a piece of information from an operator in HI that was standing by.

While the operator in NH didn't have direct communication with HI the messaage was relayed by various operators back to him in well under 3 minutes. That's not bad at all!

Militarily (or para militarily) ham radio probably isn't too useful because anyone with a $100 shortwaave set can listen in on communications because it's not encrypted. Because it is illegal to encrypt, I would imagine there are not too many encryption devices out there, I suppose that if f the Great Zombie Apocolypse happened someone would figure something out but but if it ain't happening now, the learning curve would be too fast and the price of said device likely too expensive for the average guy.

Still, it makes sense for prepper types to get licensed and learn to use the equipment because it's another tool in the box. Note I said licensed. That's because unlicensed operation is frowned on by the ham community and any attempt at 'borrowing' or making up a call sign will be outed almost instantly. 

Of course a number of HF rigs are squirreled away with their owners figuring that if the balloon goes up they can break them out and run unlicensed. I suppose at this point nobody will really ask a lot of questions about licensing BUT when the balloon goes up is not the time to be fumbling with the manual to figure how to make the damned thing work. The time to do thaat is when you are relaxed and have the time.

Besides, if you don't know the proceedures not too many people will pay you any attention and on top of that you could just be making things worse for everyone else. You don't want to get everyone mad at you.

After all, a lot of preppers send a lot of lead downrange practicing and certainly know how to use their rifles. Yet they won't get licensed to learn another skill.

If the weather is OK I'll show up at the match and go on the air and show anyone that wants to know how things work and I'll explain the licensing proceedures but please don't ask me how to program your Chinese handy-talkies. I simply do not know.

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I'm going to open a can of worms here.

I've just finished reading about a revolutionary new pistol cartridge, the .30 Super Carry which came out very recently and is now well on its way to the list of unsuccessful botique cartridges. 

Revolutionary my eye. It's just another botique cartridges designed to get shooters all amped up enough to open their wallets.

Everything gunmakers do gets listed as revolutionary or high tech. The truth is the last 'revolutionary' thing to happen in the handgun world was when Glock started using polymeyer, a plastic. When you look at it, using plastics really isn't too revolutionary. The basic mechanics and chemistry hasn't really changed.

Going back to practical basics, there has not been much of a change in handguns since the turn of the 20th century when semi automatic pistols arrived on scene. 

We still use the same basic fixed cartridges we have used since the mid 1800s. The 1911 model pistol that served from pre WW1 is still being used in one form or another by the military and in the civilian world is far from being obsolete. It does the job it was created to and pretty much just as well and the newest latest and greatest. 

The actions of the newest, latest and greatest still rely on the mehcanics developed decades ago and pretty much do what they did back in the day. They launch a projectile.

Of course, things have improved with advances in chemistry. We no longer use black powder, smokeless is the norm these days. 

So why is everything so revolutionary?

Enter gunwriters who heve the amazing ability to pull things out of thin air. "The 1911 has been entirely remodeled with the addition of the special knurled slide stop. Unlike the previously serrated slide stop this exciting new one is knurled! It's been approved by BATFE for sale in the civilian market and makes the pistol far more efficient for home defense."

So a week after the article comes out Joe Gun nut hears someone breaking in and because he has a serrated slide stop he feels underarmed without the knurled one and bails out a window.

(Meanwhile across town Henry  'Pops' Schelpp, a 97 year old WW2 veteran puts four green corroded .22 shorts into the foreheads of four home invaders with an 1898 model rolling block Stevens his father gave him when he was 12 to shoot rabbits with. He bought the ammo in 1941 just before he enlisted after Pearl Harbor and hasn't fired a gun since 1945 when he left the service.)   

I make no apologies about not getting excited with the new and improved revolutionary things gunmakers come out with unless I can see with my own eyes and make my own judgement that the improvement is really worth the time, effort and money to get it.

As far as the amazing .30 Super Carry goes, when I first heard about it I figured it wouldn't make the cut. About the only pistol cartridges that have stood the test of time well are the .45 ACP, the 9mm Luger, the .38 Special, the .357 magnum and of course the .22 rimfire.

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One of the things that has seemed to go away and stay away after Covid

are those people that felt they had to hold their face about six inches from you when they talked to you.

Thank God they have not gone back to it.

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I've mentioned this some time back and it happened again.

I have a friend in health care that reported to me that a black man specified that he wanted a white doctor. I asked my friend if the man appeared to be college educated. He was.

Interesting. 

My take on this is the man wanted a competent MD for which I can't slight him. His perceptions were likely based on what he sees as diversity policies in colleges these days. 

Now I don't know it race has anything to do with getting into a good medical school but I bet the guy that wanted a white doctor assumed it did and that the entry level requirements were lower for minorities than whites.

I can't say as I blame him for thinking that way. 

While I really don't care if a doctor that works on me is a minority or not, I certainly do care about his competence. I have in the past and will probably do so again in the future run a doctor's name through my friend to see if they are any good. While I do check their reputation for competence I don't bother checking out the crap like race, religion etc. because I don't care.

My friend told me about a certain black doctor that is one of the best in his field that occasionally has his competence questioned based on his race. That must suck yet I do understand why.

The forced diversity hurts all of us and is also a serious slap in the face of a minority that busts his ass and puts in all the time and effort to get a real education (as opposed to being handed some kind of participation trophy) because it punishes success.

During the BLM/Chop zone riots in Seattle I heard that black students at a Washington college were excused from taking finals because they were supposedly too busy fighting for their rights.

What horse$hit!

If I were some type of business leader, CEO or whatever running a corporation I would look at any degree holder from that institution with a very jaundiced eye and probably question their degree to see if it was earned or was a participation trophy. 

Access to education and opportunity should have nothing to do with race and everything to do with indivudual competence. Anything less is an insult to those competent enough to compete honestly.

Any organization that replaces the unrelenting pursuit of excellence with diversity for the sake of diversity might just as well close shop because they will likely produce nothing worthwhile again.

Forced diversity lowers standards and drags all of us down. When we return to the unrellenting pursuit of excellence irregardless of race, creed or color we'll be back on the road to success.

 

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Today will be a day of itchulating

and finishing up in the front bedroom.

which is a pain in the ass.

Walls are easy enough, it's the ceiling that will leave my face itching for the next day or so. 

Whatever.

Update. There is supposed to be some ham radio activity going on in Ethiopia. That's an ATNO for me. (ATNO=All Time New One)

I'll leave the laptop on the clusters and check it from time to time.

Propogation looks pretty good on 17, 15, 21 and 10 meters.

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Another day, another post.

Busy today. Maybe later

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I own 14.237 Mhz.

It is my frequency. I own it. I bought it from the FCC at an eBay auction. I have the appropriate paperwork to prove it. Go to my QRZ page and email me and I'll send you a copy. I paid $8700 for it.

Is what I told someone that DEMANDED I get off of his 'personal frequency'.

Nobody person owns the airwaves. The frequencies allotted by the FCC are open on a first come, first served basis and the first rule of amateur radio is courtesy and respect.

The asshole that DEMANDED I move.

What is so funny is that when I said I had purchased the frequency I could hear his jaw drop.

Enough is enough and all he had to do is ask politely. Instead he tried to demand and I decided not to put up with a bully.

A STUPID bully at that.

Boy is my wife going to be pissed off when she sees an $8700 charge to eBay on my VISA!

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You gotta love good NCOs...and good wives.

as an old veteran I was doing my job. 

Of course my job is keeping young servicemen guessing.

There's he 5 mile chow line carrying a 40 pound musket story when I said I felt bad for the cannoneers that had to drag their cannons along to ge fed.

But the one I remembered the best was the time I told a young Marine that the day I got out of basic training I screwed 7 different women with the same hard-on. (The fact is I was married at the time and went straight home for the weekend but lets not let the facts get in the way of a good story.)

There was a busy staff sergeant in the room. He didn't look up. He simply said to the private "Marine basic was longer. For me it was eight." 

Now the Staff Sergeant's wife was ten feet away and smirked delightedly and quietly vanished. She knew the drill and knew what was going on. The old guys were roughing up the pups. It was her time to get the hell out of Dodge and let nature run it's course. 

Looking back on it, I'm sure she hid within earshot and laughed her ass off.

I had 30 years on the Staff Sergeant at the time and he quietly continued what he was doing. No biggie.

The young Marine went agog for a couple of seconds and blushed. He wasn't stupid and knew he had been had.

Shortly after that I realized the Staff Sergeant was one lucky bastard because later that afternoon I saw his wife on the firing line with an M-1 firing away. I don't know what her scores were but I assume she shot a perfect score (all rounds landed SAFELY in Lake Erie)

When I saw that I realized I was witnessing a match made in heaven.

Some women understand men and enjoy them. Others don't.

The lucky bastard!

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Someone asked me what the best SpecOps group in the work was.

I told him it was the gnarled peasants of someplace that want to be left alone.

Think about it for a minute. Every nation teaches it's SpecOps people all about the latest weapons and killing machines. The SpecOps people go in thusly armed.

When the gnarled peasants decide to resist they don't have such finery so as a result EVERYTHING becomes a weapon.

EVERYTHING. 

Look at the Ukranians. They use everything from Twitter to tin cans. 

I always liked the Tweets from some Ukranian about how he was sodomizing Russian conscripts and was keeping score. It really likely didn't do a whole lot but like most things it was just another drop in the bucket. IIRC he was called the Odessa Ass Bandit.

Of course it was a recurring rumor that I have heard go around a few times over the years but when you get a teenage conscript the rumor goes through the barracks like $hit through a goose. In stays in the back of a kid's mind.

Meanwhile Private Ivan who has let this stew in his mind is posted on some kind of dopey guard duty near a building somewhere occupied by somebodys 93 year old grandmother. Granny gets up at 0300 to get a glass of water because she can't sleep and glances out the window. There's Private Ivan!

So Granny fishes through the trash for a tin can and simply drops it out the window where it hits the pavement with a clang and she is treated to a panic stricken Private Ivan reacting.

"Is ass bandit! Is ass bandit!" he shouts, running off into the darkness. Granny smiles and heads back to sleep with a smile  knowing she did her bit. She knows Private Ivan is going to catch hell for leaving his post. 

While not much, she has just added to his misery and demoralized him a little more and added to his homesickness. 

Or the farmer that fired up his tractor and started stealing tanks that the Russkis had left behind because they ran out of fuel. An agricultural tractor certainly isn't a tank retrieving military vehicle or a weapon. Yet one of the peasants weaponizes it because it's all he has to work with. It does the job and now the Ukranians have another tank or two, free. For nothin'!

Or the little regional militia that drops a bridge to stop a train delivering Russian supplies and then drops the one behind the train so it can't back up and reroute in effect leaving a trainload of supplies that can either be guarded which ties up people or abandoned which means a trainload of free stuff for the Ukranians.

Actually the likely scenario there is that Putin will pour on the coal (hurting-maybe destroying- his economy) and overrun the Ukraine. When that happens Chapter Two will begin. Now the poor bastard has to keep it and in the absence of a Ukrainian military structure the gnarled peasants take charge and things get weird.

The Ukrainian people will start. There will be no pitched battles, just a slow grind of a murder here and there of a Russian. Sporadic vandalism. The bar Ivan frequents will be bombed and we're back to the slow grind. Some ten year old will drop a brick on Ivan's head from a third story building and Ivan will be sent back home to get coloring books for Christmas for the rest of his life.

Ivan's buddies will not be too happy, either. They'll be scared.

In short it may take a while but eventually Ivan will pack up and go home leaving the Ukranians to rebuild and return to their business.

This has happened to the Russians in Afghanistan and happened to the United States in Vietnam. It happened to the Japanese in the Philipines, the Germans in Paris and countless others.

If the people don't want someone there they will find a way to throw the invaders out.  

We talk about counterinsurgency and our Green Berets but the truth is the Green Beret types will only be successful if the people want their help in the first place. If not, they'll get run out.

The all time best SpecOp fighters in the planet are the gnarled, pissed off peasants.

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One of the things I have not figured out is why anyone with even a quarter of a working brain

would run for political office.

I sure the hell wouldn't even though me having a quarter of a working brain could be argued by any power hungry liberal.

Anyone that would run for political office is the wrong person for the office to begin with.

Maybe an exception could be made for former President Trump. Sure, it's a big maybe but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

While he clearly ran for the wrong reasons, as big of a jerk as he is he did the best job of any president I have ever seen in my life.

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How to get a senior discount on services in the house.

You explain to him that you will use the money you save on the discount to go out and drink with.

That way there won't be a retired old fart hanging out, watching your every move, asking questions and in general being annoying.

That way he will be able to get some work done.

Worked pretty good for the painter I just hired.

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The other night I went next door to visit my neighbor

who has been my neighbor for the past thirty years.

The usual television was on in the background and some talking head was babbling something about the LGBTQ community. I really wasn't paying any attention to it at all but found it mildly annoying because of my general attitude of not giving a damn about someone's sexuality. 

I said to my neighbor, "Not that I care but we've been neighbors for thirty years and we have never asked each other about our sexual preferences and it'smost likely neither of us cares. We're neighbors."

"You're right. I suppose if you asked I'd tell you I'm a 100% straight female," she said.

"Huh, You don't say," I replied. "Straight male."

I wish the LGBTQ gang would stop tooting their horns because I really don't care what you are just so long as you treat me halfway decently. 

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You're supposed to spend it on hookers and blow.

One of my standard answers for what to do with a Chrismas bonus.

The sun rises in the east, sets in the west, the moon makes the tides rise and fall, gravity never rests and if you aske me what to do with your Christmas bonus I will tell you to spend it all on hookers and b.low.

It is a standard answer.

Some younger guy asked me about that a while back and I gave them my standard answer and got a very dirty look from some busybody that overheard me.

I will give him a little credit, though. He didn't stick his nose into it.

It has been my life experience that woman tend to stick their noses into things because we let them got away with it. My guess on the reason for this is most guys at one time or another have been punched or otherwise been physically reprimanded.

We have this 'Never hit a woman' thing in our society and it's actually wrong. It should be 'never hit a lady'.

Women know this and take full advantage of it. Some of them totally abuse it. 

About 35 years ago I watched a guy get slapped because he said something that some little chickie-poo activist type didn't like.

He slapped her back and sent her reeling.

Of course I sat there because I figured she had it coming but as is often the case, some Prince Charming got up to defend the virtues of womanhood.

"Siddown, Tommy!" she had it coming." I said.

"But he hit a woman," he protested. "You never hit a woman!"

"You got it wrong, Tommy. You never hit a lady. There's a difference. She ain't no lady. She lost her rights when she slapped Johnny."

Much to her credit, the bartender, a woman, said "Tommy, Pic's right. Acutally I think she got off lightly. He hit her the same way she hit him. He probably should have used his fist. She was unladylike and lost her right to protection."

Personally, looking back on it, he should have simply knocked her out because she didn't really learn a lot from being slapped back.

Actually Tommy wasn't too bright to begin with. To put it plainly, he was big, strong and rather stupid. He also believed all of those things he heard gowing up and was told while growing up. He even believed in a stupid thing thing called a 'fair fight'.

He was somewhat of a scrapper for a while and would fight at the least provocation expecting his opponent to abide by the 'Rules for the Governence of Boxing' as laid out by the Marquis of Queensbury. 

I remember hearing him protest that his opponent didn't 'fight fair' after he lost a two second bout to a Norwegian fisherman that had simply given him a quick nut shot followed by a knee to the face, effectively ending the conflict.

I didn't see that. I did hear him complaining and ignored him. It happened again because he didn't learn the first time but eventually figured it out. He also stopped being a scrapper.

(There is a reason that the period of time between about 1880 and 1920 was called the era of good manners. In 1876 Iver Johnson started making inexpensive revolvers and a lot of people carried them until laws forbidding concealed carry were enacted.)

It's not only women that lose their rights under certain circumstances. It's also children.

If a child picks up a weapon of any kind with intent to harm another they lose their right to be treated as a child. This also applies to children that enter the public arena.

I got a some flak a while back when I criticized Greta Thunberg and when I did, I got the "She's just a child!" defense from some middle aged woman.

"A child loses their childhood protection when they either pick up a weapon or go on public record and make a statement for a cause," I shot back. "Bring your child with you to any kind of a cause rally and you are dragging your children into an unprotected area. where they could be injured. As far as a child with a weapon goes, that's just common sense. A person has an absolute right to defend themselves from anything and anyone."

As to be expected, I got the usual "But...but...but."

I have no sacred cows. 

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One of the things I did just before my mother passed

was made a plaque for the family manse.

I grew up in a neighborhood with a number of old houses, some dating back to the 1700s.

It became somewhat of an uppity thing as to who lived in the oldes house and so on and so forth. Then the historical society got involved and people in the older homes started making little plaques with the name of the original builder and the year the house was built.

Josiah Kingman

1784

would be a sample of what I mean. The plague would be attached to the home for all to see.

Now the house I grew up in was built in 1925 and probably didn't rate a plaque from the historical society so I made one for my mother that made her laugh herself silly.

She came home and saw it next to the front door. It read: 

C. Colombus

1492

Beat that!

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Good evening Mr. And Mrs America and all the ships at sea....

One time I got pissed off at a local weatherman for saying "The storm has blown safely out to sea.

I wrote the weather department about it and used the proper letter  format and if you looked at the letter you would assume it came from someone that knew proper form and had some education. The letter looked very polished.

The salutation, instead of something like 'Dear Sir,' began with 'Hey, Asshole,' and I proceeded to point out that storms may blow out to sea, but they do not blow safely out to sea because there are a lot of people that work on the water that are caught up in it and it more often than not effects them a lot harder than it does Mr. and Mrs. America who are sitting at home in Suburbia and a nice, heated home.

I was not really polite as I had recently been through one hell of a 'Noreaster and a couple of the bruises I had received still showed.

It's not all about boats and the sea, either. There are a lot of careers out there where people work strange schedules and do different non 9-5 jobs to keep society moving. Many of them leave home and hearth for long periods of time in order to make a living. Not everyone gets to be Ward Cleaver and work at the office.

I've known any number of consruction workers that regularly work in remote camps of various projects. They may not get to home and hearth for months at a time. I took one of those jobs once and while I was single and had no home to begin with, some of my coworkers had wives and kids. They knew they would be gone from late April to the middle of September when they left to return home. 

The guys that built the Alaska Pipeline were gone for months at a time and more than one of them 'worked over' on double shifts to fatten up the coffers. More than one home got built or paid off by these guys. College educations were financed. 

(Of course some guys belew every dime in strip clubs and what have you but that's to be expected, too. It's called 'choices'.)

Hell, for that matter, the reason you can get up in the middle of the night and turn on a light to pee is because some engineer type is likely sitting in front of a panel full on gauges and instruments all night monitoring some section of the power grid. While he probably goes home daily his biological sleep schedule is likely a mess.

There are a lot of others out there. Long distance truckers are another. They go out in many cases for weeks at a time to points all over Hell's Half Acre moving all sorts of things. 

Still, back to the ships at sea. About 90% of all goods travel by water at one time or another. Ask Karen how her priceless Ming vase she bought at Walmart for $2.98 arrived there and she'll likely say it was delivered by a truck even though it was made in China. I guess she thinks the Tooth Fairy brought it to the warehouse the truck driver picked it up from to deliver it to her nearby Wally World. Then again, maybe there are tunnels going around the world but I sorta doubt it.

There are a lot of other people that work out in the weather, too. Hell, even most carpenters framing houses have well used rain gear in their pickups. Fact is, I used to work for a guy that worked us senseless in rainy days and once in a whille when it cleared up and turned glorious he would tell us to roll our tools up and enjoy a beautiful afternoon. I liked the way that guy thought!

One of the things that really irks teachers is when they ask about how much money some of us make and they blow a gasket when they find out. Many times it is a lot more than they make in the classroom. Most times they prattle on about how unfair it is because they have degrees and so on.

Over the years I've offered to hook whiners like that up with seagoing jobs and they almost always reply that there's no way in hell they'd go away from home like that. I usually don't explain that the bigger paychecks are not paid because we have degrees but because we are inconvenienced.

The reason I said 'almost always' is because years ago someone took me up on it and went to work on the West Coast running barges up the inside passage to Alaska. He left the classroom in June and didn't return in September. 

I met him a years or so later and he thanked me. Then several years later I met him again and he was the mate on a tug snd was still on the Alaska run and making a killing. Sometime after that a mutual friend said he had paid cash and bought a real nice place in Idaho.

Back to the letter I sent the weather people. I admit I was pretty nasty with the way I put things to them but I was surprised to get an answer AND a promise. While the storm may very well blow out to sea, it will never again blow SAFELY out to sea.

I liked that.

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I can make it hold the 5-ring with good handloads

said the guy I was squadded with at the Garand match several years back, in an indignant tone of voice.

Now I was squaddded with a Jedi Master that had just scored in the top ten of the President's match. He knew his $hit and was talented.

I expected that his Garand was highly tuned and he had polished handloads and could hit a fly in the eye with it at 300 yards.

I thought he was bull$hitting me when he said that he could hold the 5-ring with his rifle yet when he shot his word was his bond. He was all over the paper!

Then it occurred to me. He was shooting strictly for fun. 

He reminded me of a NASCAR driver driving a Soap Box Derby car for the hell of it knowing good and well he was going to be beaten by a longshot by a 12 year old kid.

I later found out he had bought a CMP Garand a couple of weeks earlier and knew the barrel was shot out. He was going to rebuild it and decided to shoot it in competition knowing good and well he would not do very well.

I really respected him for that. A guy in his class usually has a big ego. He didn't. He just wanted to have fun and impress the most important person of all, himself.

Although his scores on the Garand match didn't impress me, his spirit did!

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One of the things on hiring a young sub is to make

sure he isn't underbidding.

What? You don't want the lowest price? You gotta be kidding me!

Actually in the long run I DO want the lowest price and by making sure the sub is going to make a few bucks it insures he'll do a good job.

I've seen it before when a sub underbids and starts getting upset that he's going to lose his shirt. They generally speed things up and in the process the quality goes downhill at a rate depending on how much he is going to lose in the process.

The trick to both gaining quality work and helping a newcomer out in the process is to make damned good and sure that he comes out well because if he feels he is doing well he will probably give you his best.

We're not talking about some dopey kid here, but up and coming aspiring professionals.

One other thing, a lunch here and there thrown their way is casting one's bread on the water. Occasionally the ducks eat it and swim off but more often than not I get back poached eggs on toast.

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You can't nail something to air.

I remember the time I was framing an addition for someone and was installing deadwood, often called nailers or backing. It's installed along places where the sheetrock in ceilings will end between a joist to give the end of the sheet something to nail to rather than just flap in the breeze.

Scrap and otherwise useless wood is generally used. It's a good place to use it up because nobody is ever going to see it and it is needed.

Anyway, this one time I was framing and grabbed a bowed, scabby looking stud and cut it up and headed inside with it and the homeowner took one look at what I was carrying and said he wanted no junk in his house!

I explained that the reason I was using it is because it was junk that he had paid for and that's the proper place to use it up. He was inconvinced.

"You can't nail to air," I said. He looked confused so I picked out a piece of the deadwood, grabbed a nailer and drove a nail through it. When I let it go it fell to the subfloor with a thud. I picked it up and pulled the nail and told him to follow me. We went over to the plate I was going to put the deadwood and showed him how things worked.

"It's not the kind of place you want to use clear vertical grained fir or mahogany," I said. 

He looked dubious and said he wanted quality products so I pointed out that what I was doing is exactly what they do in million dollar mansions. He settled down a bit and thought about it and decided, "Yeah, maybe." I knew he was going to ask around. I completed my task.

Later when the sheetrockers hung the rock one of them commented that I had not been lazy and cheaped out on installing the deadwood nailers. I guess one of them said to him, "You can't nail sheetrock to air."

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I am going on the air in a few minutes

On the Good Old PRC 320 which is all I have to use these days.

I'm going to try and check in on the American Radio Friendship net on 40 meters when it starts. 

For those of you that don't know, nets are actually designed to spread information but virtually all of them in non emergency times are really just social nets. 

It's interesting how well they work.

A few years back we tried something. 

There was a ham in  NH and another one in HI. At the appointed time the guy in NH sent out a challenge word that required a countersign from the guy in HI. 

Everyone involved was supposed to send me an instant message when they got both the challenge and the countersign and include the time.

The message, IIRC, at the appointed hour got to HI in about a minute and the countersign got back to NH in about the same time. It was actually a little under 2 minutes.

It went from NH to WA to HI and back as the NH and HI people could not make direct contact. 

There were about 40 people involved in this and my computer lit up like a Christmas tree with everyone checking in! It took all of about 7 minutes to get the word out to everyone and most likely it was faster than that.

Of course several of the guys stayed on for about another 15 or 20 minutes looking for stragglers but there were none reported.

It's amazing how fast the word can be spread with ham radio.

Anyway, tonight is just a social net and I am going to try and check in with 30 watts and a wire in a tree.

We shall see what we shall see.

*************************

In other news a Social Security scammer wanted my SSN. It hasn't changed since President Roosevelt gave it to me personally. It's still 000 00 0006. I gave it to him.

He sked me how old I was and I said I was born in 1919.

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One of the things big shot wannabe commie types don't think about

is after the overthrow is over they will likely be the first ones lined up and shot.

The muckety mucks in BLM, Antifa, etc think that after The Big Change that they will be rewarded and invited into the nice oak paneled room and handed a snifter of brandy and will sit down in a nice leather chair to discuss the future. They think they'll live on a big house on a hill and be able to look down on all the pissants like you and me. They'll have their own private jet or chauffered limo and live like a king.

Their activism, planning and organizing has paid off.

Not.

The Big Shots in the oak paneled rooms know that these people are natural leaders and organizers that gave them even more money and power. Because they have a knack for this the Big Shots also know that the same skills these people have that gave them more money and power have the ability to organize and can turn around and take away their money and power and are now no longer an asset but a potential threat and must be eliminated.

Line 'em up and shoot 'em.

The 'useful idiots' are no longer useful and it's time to get rid of them.

It probably won't he an outright gunning down of them, the Big Shots are not that stupid. Must likely there will be a rash of mysterious accidents, suicides and the usual ways of making people dissappear in plain sight.

The subject has likely already been settled. Someone in the oak paneled room has said it to another guy that asked about what they are going to do. "Are we really going to let these people into the club?" 

"Of course not! We're not going to give those (insert appropriate racial/ethnic/political/whatever slur) into the club. They're going to just simply go away."

Two weeks after the Big Change. 'A business jet crashed into a mountain last night killing everyone on board including the two founders of the (whatever) organization Pilot error is believed to be the cause.' Pilot error my ass! 

What you won't hear is that the pilot that set the autopilot and bailed out was picked up in the desert 10 minutes before the plane hit the mountan. He was taken to the Big Oak Paneled room, handed a fat envelope and headed off somewhere to parts unknown.  Even more likely, he was whacked on the spot and now lives in an unmarked hastily dug hole in the same desert. If they were true professionals his grave site is covered with endangered plants so it's illegal to dig him up.

Or maybe this. So and so was found with three gunshot wounds to the head. Authorities have ruled it a suicide.

Then again, there's the good, old fashioned traffic accident where his brakes failed on a curve and he plunged off a cliff and an 'untimely' death, ruled he fell asleep at the wheel.

Of course the Big Shots go to the funeral and carry on about how wonderful the deceased was before their 'untimely' demise.

Did these people really think that the Big Shots were going to give those chumps a piece of the pie? HAH! No way in hell!

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Speaking of greedy muckety mucks in high places, the guys that want it all for themselves, they generally fare poorly in the long run. People get pissed off and their very greed often brings their downfall. They ought to take a lesson from the Late Jimmy Hoffa.

Teamsters generally agreed Hoffa was a crook but they didn't mind it a whole lot because Hoffa didn't steal the whole pie. He made sure the guys beneath him made out. Teamsters used to say, "He sure gets his but he makes sure we get ours!" They loved him.

Admit it or not, Hoffa put a lot of food on a lot of tables and probably enabled a lot of Teamster's kids to get a decent education. 

The average working stiff isn't really all that greedy. He's happy if he gets a decent place to live in a safe neighborhood, food on the table, a new pickup every few years and is able to raise a couple kids and be able to save enough to get them started with an education. That's not a whole hell of a lot. Hoffa knew this and made it happen. It's why he was so successful.

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